Sunday, April 26, 2015

CAPTAIN PLANET RECAP - Episode Two

EPISODE TWO: 'Rain of Terror' aka. Save the animals! Except the rats!
Immediately, we find ourselves at an abandoned factory. The structure of the first two episodes seems to be fairly identical as in episode one we got introduced to Hoggish Greedly right off the bat. And whilst I wasn't overly impressed with OTT pig man, could today be a different story? We'll soon find out as we meet our...

ECO SUPER VILLAIN OF THE WEEEEEEEEEK!!!

Ladies and gentlemen, this is Verminous Skumm. Yes, once again, the writers really aren't leaving much to the imagination with these fucking names. "HE'S BAD! IT'S RIGHT THERE IN THE NAME! NYUK NYUK! VERMINOUS. GET IT?! CAUSE HE'S A RAT!" He bursts straight through the Earth in some sort of admittedly fairly neat drilling tunneler vehicle. He has some rat henchmen with him too. And he goes right to work in winning my heart.

"The stinkin environmentalists had the place closed down, cause it was pollutin too much! Some people just got no appreciation for filth." Skumm proclaims. And immediately, it just feels right. His voice is wry and understated. A quick inspection makes my heart begin to pound as I find he is being voiced by JEFF GOLDBLUM (!!!). The sense of being a caricature of villainy is completely gone here as you just feel that this rat knows exactly why he's doing what he's doing and feels totally justified in it. And he's not OTT at all.

Now, of course, the show offers us fucking zero of the history or backstory of Verminous, but just because he's so endeared himself to me already, I'm going to make up the likeliest story. Verminous, being a half man/half rat hybrid, was probably not the most popular kid. Most likely he was ostracised, beaten, looked down upon or much worse. Who knows what sort of trauma was inflicted on him by those xenophobic goddamn humans. After having his dignity stripped from him repeatedly, Verminous decided that humans were pieces of shit and undertook a campaign of ECO VIOLENCE, to show them just what rats can do. And I'm ON BOARD. You go, Verminous. We deserve it.

So Verminous and his rat soldiers take over the factory and start burning some coal. Apparently their plan is to add a chemical to the burning and make a cloud of ACID RAIN which will totally pollute a nearby city and show those fuckwits who's boss. Any plan with acid f'n rain in it is a plan I can totally get behind.

On with the episode!

The planeteers are training on some lame obstacle course. Wheeler is perving on Linka again. They use their powers to make sure the other people lose the race, demonstrating their maturity once again. Kwame knocks Gi off the top of the wall with his Earth power and she seems okay with it because he catches her. I would be like "Bitch, I could have been killed you mother fucking turd bag!" but apparently I'm no Gi. Ma-Ti sucks at everything and falls in mud and is laughed at by the other Planeteers in another great exercise of team building by making fun of the weak South American kid.

Ma-Ti trolling count: 2

OH BUT HOLD THE PHONE! Fucking Gaia appears in a vision in midair to send the Planeteers on a mission she again doesn't want to do shit about herself. Ma-Ti has a whine. "You would all be better off without me" he says. Well, I can't really argue with him, he's the turd with the power of heart and we've already established that's a joke power if there ever was one. Lazy Gaia stays awake just long enough to tell them about Verminous Skumm.

"He's an exterminators nightmare" Wheeler says, demonstrating the very xenophobia that is motivating Verminous' campaign of vengeance. Of course, no one thinks about Verminous Skumm's point of view at all. They're all just like, BAD RAT MAN! ACID RAIN! BEAT HIM UP ALREADY!

So the mission begins and FUCKING MA-TI IS STILL WHINING LIKE A BITCH. He takes off his heart ring (likely because its shit) and ostensibly quits the Planeteers, sitting his ass on the plane while his teammates put their ass on the line. Serves them right for treating him like shit I suppose, but fuck this whole thing is just endless bitching from Ma-Ti and he drains my sympathy in even quicker time than a sexual encounter with Scarlett Johansson.

"As the old saying goes, into every life a little ACID RAIN must fall" - Scumm says, and my heart melts a little inside. Skumm's minions shoot toxic waste out of guns at the Planeteers. Wheeler decides to use his fire to burn it up but it just ends up fuelling the acid rain cloud. Epic fail. This episode is definitely way better than the first one. Awesome villain, and he's actually winning.

Unfortunately, the rats take the Planeteers prisoner instead of killing them, unfortunately prolonging the agony of this series. Ma-Ti still cowers on the plane like a bitch. Ma-Ti FEELS HIS FRIENDS FEELINGS with the heart ring. Holy shit, that's useful! Especially cause he's already seen them imprisoned on his magical screen of omniscience and anyone with half a brain could probably have guessed without a fucking heart ring that they're probably DISTRESSED AND IN NEED OF HELP! So the heart ring does nothing useful to help him at all, because Ma-Ti grows a miniature set of balls and sneaks in in an oil drum and rescues his friends. Gaia wakes back up and appears in another useless vision to tell him that with the power of heart Ma-Ti can make it.

Trolling Ma-Ti count: 3.

Lazy ass Gaia appears from a nap to see how badly her illegal child army is fucking up.

Meanwhile, the prevailing wind is set to blow the acid rain cloud towards UNIDENTIFIED CITY! OH NO! So the Planeteers summon captain planet, which they probably should have fucking done in the first place. I'm guessing this is going to become a pattern. Planeteers fuck around without Captain Planet and fail, summon Captain Planet and succeed. Logic would maybe dictate that they should just summon the fucking blue monstrosity from the get go, but as we've seen, logic is not this show's strong point.

OH WOW! The acid rain totally takes out a farm! Score one for Skumm! "Now that's entertainment!" Scumm laughs in his awesome understated diabolical snicker. The best thing is, the farm is not mentioned or shown for the rest of the episode, so Verminous takes a victory here! Totally acid rained the fuck out of that farm! Yeah!

Captain Planet blows the cloud away. Yawn. Then he dissipates it with some deus ex machina mineral deposit. Sigh.

"Hey you! Get offa my cloud!" Skumm says. He tried to blast Captain Planet with a big tank gun, but Captain Planet ties it in a knot and finally, Skumm runs away. At least he didn't get captured and he's likely to be back. I love that guy.

"The real hero is Ma-Ti" says Captain Planet. UM, WHAT?! I CALL BULLSHIT. He whined and bitched the entire episode. He did fucking nothing except hide on a plane while his friends were fighting on the front lines. No, Ma-Ti you are not a hero. You are a Grade A bitch, with the bitchiest bitch power of them all and a fucking useless monkey. Captain Planet immediately goes straight to my shitlist for this completely delusional appraisal of the situation.

Apparently, this is what a hero looks like. Looks more like a whiny bitch to me.

Our episode finally ends, as we get another tasty eco tip about recycling or something. I don't know, I stopped paying attention after Skumm lost. Admittedly, this episode was MUCH better than episode one. Verminous Skumm is fantastic, and Jeff Goldblum does an amazing job with him. Plus, he's totally justified in polluting against those humans that treated him like shit. Make peace with rats goddammit. They're people too.

Episode Two Pollute-O-Meter: This episode is totally carbon neutral. Because the noise pollution of Ma-Ti's bitching was cancelled out by Verminous Skumm's beautiful voice acting.